> On Apr 3, 2012, at 9:14 AM, Michael Smith wrote:
>
> > What the research shows is simply that if you add up
> > the the votes, rated on a liberal/conservative scale, then
> > even a Blue Dog has a lower lifetime right-wing batting average
> > than the most liberal Republican. Mmm. So what does this
> > imply, exactly?
>
> Nothing, clearly. I give up.
Actually, what they did come with is a fact of some interest, I think, about the shaking-out of the respective demographics to which each party appeals, due mostly to the uniformitization of American culture and the diminution of regional differences.
'Polarization' seems a misleading word for this, though. It suggests that the parties are off on opposite trajectories, approaching the respective 'poles' of -- what? New Deal liberalism on the one hand, and Falangism on the other?
Whereas the reality is, I would say, that both parties are moving right, and drawing closer to each other if anything; certainly not farther apart. Those movements are quite consistent with the one-dimensional sorting-out and stratification and increasingly coherent 'branding' of the two gangs, noticed in this research.
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Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
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